World News Quick Take

Agencies

UNITED KINGDOM

Wedding mistaken for sham

Immigration officials admitted on Friday that they mistakenly raided the wedding of an Italian man and his Chinese bride because they believed the marriage was a sham. Massimo Ciabattini and his bride, Miao Guo, had their big day ruined when border police stormed into their wedding ceremony at a London town hall last week and hauled them out for questioning. The couple had attracted a registrar’s suspicion because Guo’s visa was due to expire soon and they appeared to have difficulty spelling each other’s names. Border officials realized their mistake after questioning the couple and their bridesmaids. The marriage ceremony resumed afterward, the town hall confirmed. To compound officials’ embarrassment, they had invited a journalist from a local newspaper along to witness the raid as an example of their work combating bogus marriages between strangers trying to gain British residency.

KENYA

German cleared of murder

A court has acquitted a German man who was arrested while sleeping with the decomposing body of his Kenyan wife and charged with her murder, court officials said on Friday. The court in the coastal city of Mombasa ruled on Thursday that there was insufficient evidence to convict the man, identified in court documents as Michael Bibcke Robel, 43, from the city of Hamburg, of murdering Esther Elsi Igoki Munyi in December 2009. The court heard how the accused was found sleeping next to his dead, decomposing wife at their home near Mombasa after police were alerted by the smell. The accused had also stabbed himself in the chest in an apparent failed suicide attempt. “It is pertinent that under cross-examination by the defence counsel, the doctor did concede that no obvious injuries were seen on the neck. There was no strangulation,” Judge Maureen Odero said in her ruling. She also ruled that there were no eyewitnesses to the events, and that an autopsy failed to establish the precise cause of death beyond that of asphyxia.

RUSSIA

Squatting for metro tickets

Passengers on the Moscow metro puffed and sweated for a free ride on Friday after Olympic officials unveiled a machine that issues a free ticket as a reward for performing 30 squats. By setting the somewhat embarrassing challenge with a time limit of two minutes, the organizers said they were encouraging people to incorporate “Olympic values” into their commute. It is part of a campaign by the nation’s Olympic Committee that picks projects proposed by the public to “add elements of sport into daily life.” The campaign aims to make Russians healthier so that they do not simply curl up on a couch to watch the events in the Winter Olympics in Sochi in February next year.

RUSSIA

Six found guilty of slaying

A jury has found six men accused of the brutal slaying of a farming family guilty on all counts. The 2010 killing of 12 people, including four children, in the village of Kushchevskaya in the southern Krasnodar region shocked the nation. Several assailants burst into the home of a farmer, killing him, his entire family and their guests. Most of the victims were stabbed to death. The alleged leader of the gang that committed the killings, Sergey Tsapok, was arrested shortly after along with several suspected accomplices. Their trial in the Krasnodar Regional Court began a year ago, and the jury delivered the verdict on Friday. A sentence is expected next week.